Read Senate-Commissioned Reports on the Scale of the Russian Misinformation Campaign

Two outside research groups used data obtained from Silicon Valley giants by the Senate Intelligence Committee to paint a sweeping picture of Russia’s online disinformation efforts both before and after the 2016 presidential election in reports released Monday. The groups’ findings, according to Axios, bolster the public’s understanding of the Russian campaign and provide new details on how it operated:

The Internet Research Agency troll farm focused much of its attention on black audiences, creating “an expansive cross-platform media mirage targeting the Black community, which shared and cross-promoted authentic Black media to create an immersive influence ecosystem,” per the New Knowledge report. The group’s cultivation of sometimes-unsuspecting on-the-ground collaborators was “substantially more pronounced on Black-targeted accounts.”

It engaged in voter suppression. New Knowledge said that “the suppression narratives were targeted almost exclusively at the Black community on Instagram and Facebook” in the lead-up to the 2016 election. The IRA simultaneously targeted right-leaning audiences with content raising fears of voter fraud.

The group’s efforts didn’t slow down after they became clear to the public. “Surprisingly, these campaigns did not stop once Russia’s IRA was caught interfering in the 2016 election. Engagement rates increased and covered a widening range of public policy issues, national security issues, and issues pertinent to younger voters,” said researchers from Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project.

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